


a cure for no real sickness.

by GRIMMInsanity



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath, Confessional, Emotional, M/M, Mild Wincest., Season 8 finale, also., but i promise, hope you won't mind!, i think you'll like it!, right - Freeform, so this might have you having the feels, some mild spoilers apply, sort of end of the world, with some of my personal head canons thrown in
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-22
Updated: 2013-05-22
Packaged: 2017-12-12 15:08:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/812943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GRIMMInsanity/pseuds/GRIMMInsanity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Angels. They're falling. "</p><p>The aftermath of the Season 8 Finale. A sort of exploration of characters and character reactions.<br/>Just something put together for brothersintheimpala since she wanted something.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a cure for no real sickness.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brothersintheimpala.](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=brothersintheimpala.).



The angels have fallen.

The news reek of meteor shows and collisions and people found in craters with very little sense in their minds.

At least, that’s what the humans believe.

The people speak some strange, foreign tongue and the only thing linguists can decipher, if in slight doubt, are the words ‘heaven’ and ‘fallen’ and ‘angel.’. The world is snuffed into a mild panic, speaking of religious prophecy and the end of the world, and in the middle of the chaos, two hunters and an ex-angel.

When Dean makes it back to the bunker, he’s quick to haul Sam inside. Sammy can barely stand on his own two feet and Dean worries for him. He’s coughing up blood even more then usual and Dean can’t help but think that something is broken inside. Something he can’t fix with a beer and their dad’s spicy food and pain-killers.

Dean can’t help and he feels utterly helpless.

It’s a fight to get Sam to the shower and to undress him. His little brother tries to help, and he is grateful for the idea, but Dean pushes his hands away and carefully strips him. Sam is his world and Dean needs to center and help him. Satisfy the worry that feeds itself through his veins.

He helps him wash off the grime and after wards, helps him clean the cut on his hand. Dean says nothing, but his lips tighten and turn down ever so slightly at the sight of a fresh line splitting down from the curve of the last scar on Sam’s hand. The elder Winchester doesn’t notice Sam’s pursed lips and tense shoulders, but Dean doesn’t notice much in the pursuit of making Sam clean and comfortable and asleep.

Dean takes the Sam to bed after that.

With a hand cleaned and stitched and bandaged, he helps Sam into his sweat pants and t-shirt, and tucks him away into bed. Once that’s done, in the dim light of the room, he sits down on the edge of the bed, and brushes away strands of damp hair from Sam’s pale and drawn face. Sam makes a joke, light and humorous to try and lighten the mood, and ends up with a body aching of pain and a chest and throat filled with blood and coughs that make him shudder.

Dean is tense when he tells Sam he’s an ‘idiot’ and ‘you shouldn’t be talking. Go to sleep, you damn sasquatch.’

Sam winces in pain, but brings his uninjured hand to squeeze Dean’s knee in thanks. Dean just huffs, and leans down to brush his lips against a bruised temple, and rests there for a moment. Sam’s breath is still shuddering, but it relents into a quiet rasp when he finally falls asleep.

Dean leaves him to sleep.

__________________________________________

The hunter returns to the library to find Cas, still muddied and silent, resting in a chair by the table.

The man has yet to say anything aside from their names, spoken in hurried whispers and relief when he was found, and Dean moves toward him. If anything, to give him a proper place to rest. Even an angel needs a moment of peace. When he comes to Castiel’s side, he finds the face reddened with tears and hands tight into the folds of his trench coat.

Dean is unsure of how to react, as this is the first time he finds Cas so emotional, aside from wrathful anger. He sets a hand upon that shoulder and Cas twitches, tenses under that hand, and turns tear-stained blue eyes, rimmed red around the ages toward the hunter.

“Cas, what-?” Dean begins to ask, but he’s cut short by a hand clutching onto his own, tight with nails digging into skin.

“Dean, I..” He stops, his voice rougher then before, tight with confused agony. “I… I don’t understand. What is making me hurt so?”

The eldest Winchester doesn’t know what to say, mouth having fallen open with empty words.

“I don’t know why I’m upset. I-I…. It feels like I’m falling a-apart and I don’t know _why_.”

Dean shuts his mouth, and after a moment, brushes some stray stands from that quivering face, and helps him up. Cas follows in a trance, stumbling here or there as Dean brings him to his room. Dean doesn’t quite want to put Cas away into his clean sheets with him being dirty as he is, but he doesn’t want to overstep any boundaries.

Cas is family, but he’s not comfortable with the idea of undressing Cas like he is Sam, and instead, helps pull off his boots and his coat, and notices, in that moment, how small Castiel looks without the massive thing and how he’s curling in on himself with a fresh sense of sobbing that he looks terrified about even letting out. Dean simply quiets him and tucks him away into bed.

Dean shuts the door to the sound of muffled moaning, quiet and in pain, and all he hears is the barely there word of ‘ _Why_?’.

__________________________________________

Dean gets himself a beer and sits down in the library and just sits. He’s not too sure of what he’s supposed to do, and instead, take a long drag of his drink.

In his mind, even the idea of angels falling isn’t right. Sammy was the believer of the both of them, the one with the faith, and the idea that there was a heaven, but even so, Dean was just the one who kept his feet on solid ground, the one who kept his eyes facing forward, and the one who thought the idea of some big bearded man and his winged floozies looking after people on Earth stupid as shit.

But after the past few years, he begins to have some faith, have some understanding of is happening, and the image of the angels falling is a testament to Cas’ pain, to Sam’s faith falling apart, and Dean’s own heart and mind trembling where they sit.

Dean is left to think on everything.

The way Sam is falling apart at the seams and not even an angel can fix his brother, the way he feels so very, very tired, with bones aching and mind unrelentingly alert, and the way his very world is shaking on it’s supports.

He sets his arms against the edge of the table, fingers grasping the amber bottle tight, and sets his forehead against tense arms.

For the first time, in a long while, Dean just stops and allows himself to shake, to let out a dry sob here or there, and to feel the burn of tears in his eyes and throat.

He doesn’t let them fall.

No, that wouldn’t be right. It would be weak and Dean Winchester is only weak when Sammy pushes him far enough to care, to let it all out, and right now, Sammy, and Cas, need him .

He won’t allow himself the tears, but he allows himself the chance to feel the wave of pure hopelessness wash over him and just… _quake_.

Dean falls asleep against the table with a half-empty bottle in a tight grip. 

__________________________________________

Sam finds him in the morning, and with the first look at Dean’s face, is quick to fall to his knees before his brother, take his calloused hands, and press kisses to their roughened surfaces. With bruised eyes and drawn cheeks, Sam’s love washes over Dean and all the man can do is pull him close. Dean presses lips to those darkened eyes and to those dry and cracked lips, and whispers words of love and adoration and worry and fear and apologies and anything else until his eyes grow wet and he buries himself into Sam’s over-grown hair .

Sam holds on to his brother and listens to the sobs of a man so very, very tired and so very, very exhausted.

Sam is silent and allows it, as he has always allowed it.


End file.
